It has long been recognized to use suction piles in mooring systems for various structures, such as walkways, boat piers, floating drilling and production platforms, and various types of ships and buoy mooring systems. Typically, such systems utilize a tubular pile in which the open end of the pile is embedded into the seabed by hydrostatic pressure, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,817,040 to Stevens, U.S. Pat. No. 4,432,671 to Westra, U.S. Pat. No. 4,575,282 to Pardue, and U.S. patent publ. no. 2011/0011320 to Yemington (publ. January 2011).
It is also known to utilize such suction piles in conjunction with offshore well drilling applications including, for example, drilling guides and other related applications, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,985 to Arnim, U.S. Pat. No. 4,558,744 to Gibb, U.S. Pat. No. 6,692,194 to Strand, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,621,059 to McCoy.
As marine hydrocarbon well drilling has extended to increasingly deeper waters, including depths between 5,000-8,000 feet and deeper, deepwater well drilling has pushed the limits of conventional flow control and emergency shut-off procedures. For example, a primary method for stopping or preventing an uncontrollable flow in deep water wells is the use of a mud column having an equalizing pressure that resists unwanted hydrocarbon flow. If this method fails, a pre-installed blow-out preventer (BOP) is used such as that shown in FIG. 1, which is located at the sea floor/mud-line and connected to the wellhead. If the BOP should fail, such as what occurred at the Macondo prospect well in the Gulf of Mexico, various other solutions could be employed including, for example, drilling one or more relief wells, but such solution can be time-consuming to implement and thereby increases the extent of the oil spill.
Thus, there is still a need for systems configured to contain an uncontrollable deep water wellhead flow that can be implemented if the BOP fails.